Contribution of Community Forestry in the Local livelihood and Resource Management in Touk Kaki, Cambodia

Livelihoods of community are largely based on the forest; they could be expected to be strongly committed to preserving the forest and its non-timber forest products (NTFP) resources while at the same time using them for their daily livelihood. Local benefits are limited to the uses of forest resources. The incomes achieved are barely enough to support and improve the livelihoods while many study have revealed that resource are being declined due to over exploitation. The objective of study is to evaluate the process of community forestry and how community forestry contributes to maintain sustainable resource and to the local livelihood wellbeing. 125 households were selected randomly for the questionnaire survey in Toul Kaki commune. Logistic regression results have revealed that most of local household depend mostly on fishing in mangrove forest. Logistic regression also shown crop plantation and rice farming were also important after fishing activities to the share of better off of local household. In conclusion, as the community forestry in Toul Kaki is more rely on rice farming and fishery resource, this community forestry has a great different from other community forestry. Fishery resources are the main contribution from forest as the main NTFPs in the community. However, the community forestry has been successfully implemented since more household are betteroff after 5 years of establishment of CF. Forestry commune council was the most active local institute helping and support local community for their livelihood activities with the help of local NGOs that were doing relevant activities.